


once upon a time

by darcylindbergh



Series: things fairy tales are made of [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 12 Days of Christmas, Declarations Of Love, Ficlet Collection, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-08 15:44:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8850706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: It starts with a wish.
*In the beginning, John comes home.





	1. Letters to Santa

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Случилось это давным-давно (Once upon a time)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14256618) by [PulpFiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PulpFiction/pseuds/PulpFiction)



> This is a series of connected ficlets originally posted to tumblr for the [12 Days of Fic-mas](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com/post/154205774739/its-that-time-of-year-again-starting-december), posted by hudders-and-hiddles. Each chapter title is a prompt from the series; this fic will constitute the first six prompts. 
> 
> This is a linear, connected set of scenes, but please note that they are tumblr ficlets and thus this story may lack some of the fleshing out and details that is typical of traditional fics.

_...It starts with a wish._

Rain, steady on the windowpanes, and the crackle of the fire in the hearth: if Sherlock closes his eyes, he can almost imagine that there’s comfort in the quiet of the flat.

Instead, 221B is empty and the fire is dying. There’s no one to stoke it, to add another log and fuss over the embers, to complain that Sherlock hasn’t done it yet himself. There hasn’t been in years, and Sherlock understands now that there won’t ever be again.

It was foolish, anyway, to think that there was a chance, now that everything was said and done. To allow himself the daydreams of another person in the flat, of someone else to share the newspapers with in the morning, to share the silences with at night. Two toothbrushes in the cup in the bathroom. Two coats on the pegs, side-by-side. Nothing more than nostalgia and fantasy, the sort of impossibilities that little children write into their letters to Santa, and Sherlock ought to know better by now.

He’s been alone in this flat for over a year, and before him there was only the dust. 

John isn’t coming back.

There had been moments when Sherlock had thought, _maybe_. Drawn-out seconds when their eyes had caught and breaths had slowed and Sherlock had thought, _possibly_. When he’d thought that maybe he wasn’t the only one who wanted–-that maybe, if he reached, John would reach back. 

But there hadn’t been time and the moments had passed, and John has been living alone in the house in the suburbs for almost a month. 

It’s fine, Sherlock thinks. He’s learned how to love John Watson years ago: quietly, where no one else can see.

Eventually he’ll get up and stoke the fire. He’ll make a cup of tea, check the website. Play something on the violin. Turn on the telly and fill the room with noise to drown out all the silences. He’ll manage. He’ll make do. It’s not like he’s losing anything he had before. 

Somewhere in the flat, the doorbell rings.

Sherlock huffs into the sofa cushions and ignores it. He doesn’t want the distraction tonight; he wants to allow himself this one evening of wallowing before he gets up tomorrow and begins again. One last night to say goodbye to everything he’d wished for, before he settles into everything he’s gotten: a friend and a good flat, but never together, and nothing more.

The bell doesn’t ring again, but one or two minutes pass before he realises Mrs Hudson hasn’t answered it either, so whoever it was must’ve either gone away–-but then why ring at all?–-or still be standing there, waiting. Too anxious to ring again, or already frightened off? 

He slides off the sofa with a frown and goes to stand at the top of the stairs, listening. There’s nothing to hear. 

Down to the front hall; everything is quiet in the muted rush of rain outside. Sherlock stands at the door and contemplates the likelihood of someone standing on the other side, waiting silently in the rain, a grim spectre too nervous or too proud to ask twice for help.

 _Interesting,_ he decides, and opens the door. 

It’s John.

It’s _John_ , standing with his hair plastered to his head, raindrops glinting in the streetlights. John, with a single shoulder bag and eyes too dark to read, with his chin tilted up in familiar determination and something like a smile on his mouth. He doesn’t make a move to come inside, like he’s waiting for something. Waiting for a sign.

“You have a key,” Sherlock says, confused.

John nods. “I wanted to give you the chance to say no. To this.” He touches the strap of his bag and then nods again. Licks the rain off his lips. Takes a deep breath and meets Sherlock’s gaze. “To me.”

Sherlock feels like all the breath and all the blood has gone out of him. “To you,” he repeats. He can’t possibly mean what Sherlock thinks he means-–what Sherlock has so desperately wished he would mean. He can’t possibly, tonight, when Sherlock was on the cusp of giving up any chance of it ever being meant at all. Not after all this time.

“If I leave now,” John says, “We can just carry on the way we have been. And that’s fine. But it’s not really what I want, and I don’t really think it’s what you want.”

The rain drowns out all of Sherlock’s thoughts. Sherlock wants so much he can hardly bear to think of it, much less ask for it. “What happens,” he asks, slow and careful, “If you come inside?” 

John steps in closer, and Sherlock can’t help himself: he steps forward to meet him, stepping out into the night, into the rain. It’s cold on his skin, soaking through the fabric of his dressing gown, catching in his hair, but John puts out his hand and Sherlock takes it, and he’s not sure whether he’s drawing John in or if John is drawing him out, but the distance between them disappears as though it had never been there at all. 

“Then I’ll love you,” John says softly, and kisses him.

It’s warm, and gentle and slow and hesitant and John _kisses_ him, one hand wet on Sherlock’s cheek, his thumb stroking over cheekbone like he’s wanted to forever. The rain surrounds them, envelops them, and Sherlock feels like the rest of the world has just washed away and none of it matters because John is kissing him, soft and tender and impossibly familiar, as if to say,  _hello_ , as if to say,  _I’ve missed you_ , as if to say, _I’m home._

Something swells up deep in Sherlock’s chest, makes him feel like his body is too big and yet not big enough, making his heart feel like he’s just taken it out from underneath his breastbone and pushed it back in with new weight and new hope, like John’s is beating next to his in time. 

“I’m sorry we had to wait so long,” John whispers against Sherlock’s mouth. His eyelashes are wet. “God, I’m so sorry, I feel like we’ve waited forever.”

Sherlock blinks away the rain in his eyes. He’s soaked through and shivering, or maybe just trembling, and John pulls him closer, slides a hand under his dressing gown, over his waist. It’s warm enough to burn. “I thought–-I didn’t think-–I didn’t know you were waiting.” 

John shakes his head. “I’ve been waiting since we met. And the moment was never right, and then you were gone, and then I was somewhere else and I didn’t quite know how to get back here, and now–-now, with everything settled, I didn’t know if you–-if you still wanted, and suddenly I just knew. I knew had to come here and find out. It couldn’t wait.”

“I wanted,” Sherlock breathes, and he can’t believe how easy the words are to say, having tried so hard not to say them for so long. “I wished, even.” 

And John smiles, a small, incredible thing, and kisses Sherlock again. “Maybe that’s how I knew it had to be tonight,” he says. “I heard you.” 

 


	2. Candy Canes

Sherlock can’t stop kissing him.

Now that he’s started, now that he has John within arm’s reach, warm and willing and desperately kissing back, the floodgates have opened and years of missed moments and suppressed impulses have come rushing forth. Sherlock kisses him for the first night at the bottom of the stairs, the very first time he’d looked at John with their giggles ringing in his ears and thought, _oh, but this is special, isn’t it?_ He kisses John for the long-ago domestic mornings, lazing around the flat in quiet, sunny companionship, when he’d so often tilted up his head for a kiss as a cup of tea appeared at his elbow only to remember one wasn’t forthcoming; kisses him for every dangerous night exchanging _ready? ready_  through no more than nods, for every wild, victorious grin, for every laugh in the backs of cabs, for every syncing movement that brought them one into the other.

He kisses him for Baskerville and the fear under his breastbone that John had soothed away with a joke and a smirk and a hand on his elbow as they boarded the train, and for Barts, for a goodbye stretched over a lie and a distance he couldn’t cross and couldn’t apologise for, for the betrayal that felt like a knife between his ribs and the sound of John’s voice, _he’s my friend,_ for the agony he’d wanted to kiss out of John’s mouth but could only watch with deadened eyes. For the two years of too-far-away and the promises he’d made himself for if he ever got back without knowing whether he ever would, the promises he’d broken to let John choose someone else, somewhere else, and to come home alone. 

For that morning in the church. For leaving early. For the day John’s child had been born, and the day John’s child had become someone else’s. For the day it was over. For the waiting. For the having. For the coming home. 

Sherlock kisses John, and kisses John, and whispers, “Come inside. Come home.”

“God,” John says, voice thick like he can scarcely believe it, “Home.” 

Eventually they make it through the door and halfway up the stairs, stopping for another kiss on the landing–-every kiss they should’ve had coming in, coming home, uncertain and unsteady in the aftermath of a fight and unable to ask for reassurance except to say _all right?_ , every kiss they should’ve had when the wounds were cleaned and the bandages applied and the looks grew long with wanting, unable to move–-before they make it up to the flat.

John stops in the doorway, looking over everything. The glow of the dying fire lights his face in golds and reds and shadows, and Sherlock didn’t think he’d ever come home, and he has to reach for John again. Pull him in. Pull the shoulder bag from his arm and give him a reason to stay. 

“Hey, hey,” John says, after a long moment, pushing the wet hair out of Sherlock’s eyes. “Come on. Go put something dry on, for god’s sake, you’re shivering, and I’ve got to check this bag, make sure none of my things got wet. Supposed to be waterproof, but just to be sure. All right?”

Sherlock wrinkles his nose but agrees, pressing one more kiss to John’s cheek before slipping past him toward the bedroom. When he looks back, John is watching him from the doorway between the kitchen and sitting room, his bag in hand and his smile soft, and the happiness building in Sherlock’s ribcage spills over, making him grin back.

He tries to be quick, stripping off his wet clothes and rummaging for a clean pair of pyjamas. In the bathroom next door, he can hear John, probably looking for a towel. Sherlock hurriedly slips on a fresh dressing gown and then pauses, fingering the sleeve of another–-it would keep John warm, and the vision of him in the dark-patterned plaid is . . . appealing, to say the least. 

But is it too much? Too intimate? To see John wearing something like this of his would seem beyond personal, somehow. Almost profound.

There’s the sound of the bathroom door opening again; Sherlock hears John pad away down the hall. His heart beating hard with a new surge of nerves, Sherlock slides the dressing gown off its hook and heads back out to the sitting room.  

John is bent already by the fire, arranging another log and a few more bits of kindling. He’s changed–-wet denims exchanged for a soft pair of pyjama pants, soaked jumper exchanged for a plain white vest–-and Sherlock realises that’s what he must’ve been doing in the bathroom. He hadn’t gone upstairs to change. He’d stayed close.

Sherlock’s mouth is dry when John stands again and catches sight of him in the door. He holds up the dressing gown in his hands and tries not to fumble with his words. “I thought you might–-” he says, but can’t finish.

John’s eyes glow, his face dazzling with the breadth of his smile as he crosses the room. “Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, here, I–-yeah.” He takes it, shrugs it on. It’s too big on him. It’s perfect. “Thanks.”

It should be strange, standing here in the sitting room, both of them in Sherlock’s dressing gowns, watching the light move across each other’s faces. It should be strange, that John should be here, wearing Sherlock’s clothes, Sherlock’s lips tingling with the awareness of having been so recently kissed. It should be strange, to be here now, when Sherlock had given up on ever being here again.

It should be strange, but it’s not. It’s like everything else in the last five years had been strange, and only just now has the world realigned. 

“Tea?” Sherlock asks after a moment. Tea, to warm them up, to settle their nerves. They’ll have to talk, probably. Logistics or something. He wonders how John’s mouth will taste after tea. 

“Please,” John says, and smiles, and follows Sherlock into the kitchen. Sherlock fiddles with the kettle for a moment and sets the water on to boil, and then rummages through the cupboard. 

And, _oh, no–-_ the last teabag had been used several hours ago. “Oh. All I have is peppermint. Let me run down and see what Mrs Hudson has-–”

John shakes his head, catching Sherlock by the wrists before he can even take a second step toward the door. “Peppermint's fine,” he says, kissing the corner of Sherlock’s mouth. “We don’t need the caffeine this late anyway.” 

Sherlock frowns, but lets John kiss him. Seconds later, the kettle clicks off, the mugs come out, and the smell of peppermint fills the room. They take their tea and go to sit in front of the fire, chairs scooted closer together than usual, sipping and nudging their feet together on the rug. 

Eventually John nods and sets his mug on the side table. “You’re sure you want me to stay, then.”

“Yes,” Sherlock answers, immediately. “John. Even if it weren’t–-if this weren’t-–even if we weren’t–-” he gives a sidelong glance and finds John’s lip tilted up at the corner in gentle amusement, “-–something,” he finishes, “I’d want you to stay. No point in you being alone out in the suburbs after all.” 

John laughs, as if he can sense what Sherlock is trying to say. His voice is a tease in the dark when he says, “No, no point at all.”

“Besides,” Sherlock goes on loudly, as if he didn’t hear John, his cheeks flushing but his smile growing despite himself, “it’s better when you’re here.”

Their eyes meet and John’s laughter fades. In the light of the fire, he looks immortal. “What’s better?” 

Sherlock sets his mug to the side and slips forward, taking John’s hand. “Everything,” he says, and kisses John again. For everything he didn’t say before. For everything he thinks he can say now. “I love you, actually.”

“I think I know,” John says, and his next kiss tastes like peppermint candy canes, and his laugh.


	3. Family Gatherings

The fire burns into embers; the tea goes cold. Their laughter slows into something soft and hazy, the edge of sleep sneaking into the corners of their eyes; their fingers tangle in the space between their knees. The rest of the world has disappeared under the hush of the rain and it’s just the two of them, John and Sherlock, Sherlock and John, and everything they’ve always wanted to say but never have.

It is the safest Sherlock has ever felt. 

The words flow between them. Sometimes they’re easy, words that have been waiting on the edge, ready for the smallest push to tumbling forward. Sometimes, they’re choking, sticking in Sherlock’s throat before he can wrench them forward. Words like, _I missed you._ Words like, _I thought we had all the time in the world, and then the time ran out._ Words like, _you loved her,_  and, _never the way I loved you._

Words like, _I didn’t know._

Words like, _I’m sorry I never said._

Something like an answer forms between their hands, honesty cradled in their palms, fragile and newborn between their fingertips. Old regrets and old angers, bitterness and hurt all set forth and given voice, and all of it disappearing into smoke. 

_I’m saying it now._

_I won’t ever stop saying it._

Sherlock traces over John’s lifeline, wondering if his name would be written here if he could read it. If this was inevitable. If it was always going to end this way. If, in some other universe, in some other time, there was a John and a Sherlock that never knew what it was like to reach and feel the other reaching back. If, in some other universe, in some other time, they sat across from the fire and knew each other, but never knew what they meant to each other. John’s hands are rough, calloused, but gentle: Sherlock thinks he’s always known these hands. 

Every Sherlock has known every John, and loved him. 

Eventually John leans back into his chair, pink-cheeked and warm in Sherlock’s dressing gown, and yawns. Sherlock thinks about John changing in the bathroom, about John’s bag still sitting in a wet puddle by the corner of the sofa, and thinks, very carefully, about what will happen next. 

A noise on the stairs interrupts the thought before it fully forms. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock looks up as Mrs Hudson appears in the door frame, dressed in her nightie with a robe thrown on over top. John’s hands catch in his and still, suddenly tense along the tendons: unsure.

"Oh,” she says, taking in the scene. “John. I thought I heard your voice, but I--” Her gaze suddenly narrows. “Is that Sherlock’s dressing gown?” 

John might blush, but it’s hard to tell in the low light of the fire. He plucks self-consciously at the lapel. “Oh, um. Yeah, he leant it to me for the night.”

“Something you needed, Mrs Hudson?” Sherlock interrupts. 

“Hm? Oh, no, I--” Her eyes shift, and Sherlock knows immediately what she wants to do. “In fact, I do. A paracetamol, if you have one--my hip.” She puts on an obviously fake expression of exaggerated pain. 

Sherlock sighs. He may as well let her. “All right,” he says, “Just a minute.”

From the bathroom, fiddling with the pills, he can hear the low tones of Mrs Hudson and John in conversation. She’ll be sure to say something deceptively sweet first, Sherlock is sure, and he manages to rip away a blister pack and step back into the hall just in time to hear the tone of her voice change.

“You’re welcome back here, John, you know that. Things always were nicer when you were here. But...” She hesitates, and Sherlock imagines he would not like to be on the receiving end of whatever look she is aiming in John’s direction just now. “You have to stop all this waffling around with him.”

“No,” John assures her, “no, no, we’re--we know, now. We’re all right.”

“Because I won’t see him like this again. If you don’t mean to stay, I think it’d be kinder if you didn’t come home at all.”

“I’m staying, Mrs Hudson,” John says, and Sherlock makes his way through the kitchen to relieve him of facing her alone. “I don’t mean to leave again.”

“If you’re quite done with the interrogation,” Sherlock says, thrusting the blister pack at Mrs Hudson as he passes by. He considers his own chair, but at the last second settles instead on the arm of John’s, and John’s arm immediately comes around his waist to steady him. “It’s getting late.”

Mrs Hudson grins back at him, her serious demeanor melting away into sheer happiness as she understands, and Sherlock rests his hand over John’s. “Of course,” she says. “I’ll leave you to it. Oh, and by the way, with John back--” her eyes twinkle with false innocence-- “Will you be needing two bedrooms?”

Sherlock has a brief moment of panic; there are a lot of boundaries and logistics they haven’t worked out yet. “That has absolutely no bearing on the rent, Mrs Hudson, so if you don’t mind--”

“No,” John cuts off. “The one will do. Good night, Mrs Hudson.” 

She giggles and clasps her hands together. “Well,” she says, “The whole family back together again! It’s nice to have a full house, I think. I’ll bring tea up in the morning, boys. Good night!”

They wait, frozen with John’s arm around Sherlock, until her footsteps fade away down the stairs. Then Sherlock twists and stares down at John. “One bedroom?”

“I’m sorry,” John says in a rush, “I shouldn’t have--of course--of course it doesn’t matter, we can take this as slow as you like, there’s no rush, I’m more than happy to be just upstairs--”

Sherlock cuts him off by taking his face in both hands and kissing him, hard and deep and full of intent. “One bedroom is perfect.” 


	4. Fairy Lights

Eventually, the night deepens around them and the kisses slow. The hot press of mouths and tongues soften into brushes of breath and lingering fingertips, everything turning heavy with the onset of sleepiness. Sherlock feels like the darkness has weight to it, black treacle shadows, and when he draws back from John and looks down at him with half-lidded eyes, it’s because he’s too tired to finish opening them.

John notices. He strokes a thumb over Sherlock’s cheekbone and says, “Come on. Let’s go to bed. Are you sure--?”

“I’m sure.” He leans into John’s hand for a moment, soothed by the warmth of it, then suddenly blinks himself back into waking. “Are _you_ sure? Do you want-–?”

“Yes, of course. Of course. I want to be, you know. Near you. I just don’t want-–” John cuts himself off and looks away, thinning his lips. He’s quieter when he says, “I don’t want to ruin this.”

It’s an old, familiar fear; Sherlock has always felt it, with John. The fear of saying the wrong thing, moving the wrong way, pushing forward when all the signs have said to fall back. Of crossing a boundary, of finding a limit, before he even knew it was there. _He’ll leave_ , the fear had said, once, and Sherlock had left for him. _He’ll stop coming round_ , the fear had insisted, and Sherlock had stopped returning John’s calls. _He’ll never choose you,_ the fear had scolded, and Sherlock had given him every reason and every opportunity to choose someone else.

And still John was here. 

John was here, and the fear had been _wrong_ , and Sherlock understood the fragility of it but he didn’t want to never hold a thing like this, precious in his palms, for fear of crushing it.

Some things were worth being afraid for. 

Sherlock slides off the arm of the chair and holds out his hand for John to take. “Then don‘t,” he says. “Come with me.”

John looks up at him, his face creased with surprised tenderness, and then puts his hand in Sherlock’s and allows himself to be pulled up. They kiss; it feels like a promise. _I’m here. I’ll always be here. Where you go, I will go with you_.

The ritual of preparing for bed feels ancient, as though they have always done this, as though John has always been a part of it. Locking the doors, drawing the curtains. Sherlock douses the fire, plunging them into the dark, lit only by the glow of London outside the window, a thousand fairy lights shining in and illuminating John’s silhouette in the doorway to the kitchen, waiting with bag in hand.

Together, they go down to the bedroom, stripping off dressing gowns. Sherlock hangs them both as John finds his toiletries. The silence between them is strange only in how comfortable it is, as if they’ve always been this way, as if this is something they’ve done a hundred times, and no longer need to talk about it. They head into the loo, sharing the sink, brushing their teeth side by side as John unpacks his things. Their eyes meet in the mirror as the last of his belongings slots into place: home, at last, and for forever.

There is, finally, one awkward moment, deciding which side of the bed they each to take, but it dissolves into quiet laughter when Sherlock deduces a solution-–John, of course, should be closer to the door. Whatever unease he’ll feel in his new sleeping arrangements will be mitigated by the quick escape.

“I won’t need an escape,” John assures him, and Sherlock returns, slipping under the covers with a smirk, “If you do, at least keep it quiet.” 

The mattress dips as John slides in beside him; Sherlock can feel the whisper of him alongside his body. He lies on his back, looking up at the ceiling, waiting to see what John will do-–whether John will do anything. He’s less sure of the space between them than he was in the sitting room. Of how close is too close, how far is too far. Whether to speak or to listen. Whether to cross the sheet between them. 

He rolls onto his side, watching John’s profile in the violet dark as he settles in under the blankets. He wants to memorise the way John looks right now, in a room on the verge of becoming  _theirs_ –-the shadows gathering in his eyes, the line of his nose, the arch of his brow, the muss of his hair–-and then believe he’ll never be without the vision in front of him again. 

“This feels like a dream,” Sherlock says. 

John rolls to meet him, folding one arm beneath his pillow. Sherlock has seen him lie like this a hundred times before, and the familiarity, within touching distance and finally his to touch, throbs in his throat. 

“Did you dream this?” John asks. His voice is cautious, like he’s not sure he wants to hear the answer.

Sherlock couldn’t lie if he wanted to; he isn’t sure which answer would be the right one, or even if there _were_  a right one. “Sometimes,” he begins, hesitantly. Across the bed, John only hums his encouragement, so Sherlock goes on. “Sometimes, I’d dream about you coming downstairs. Coming in for whatever reason, sitting on the edge of the bed, and then just…staying, sort of. Or after, about you coming back, and coming to stand in the doorway with this look on your face like you’d lost your way.”

John’s hands find his under the sheets. “I did lose my way. I should’ve been here with you, but I was lost.” 

The long line of their history stretches out in the dark of the bedroom, dominos falling one after the other to spit out this moment.  “No,” Sherlock murmurs, bringing one of John’s hands up to kiss the knuckles. “No, I think–-I think this was the way. That maybe all of that had happen so that this could. So that I could believe you, maybe. So that it would be worth the risk of you.”

“Is it?” John slides closer, his nose nudging at Sherlock’s in the dark. He smells like the fireplace, like the rain, like Sherlock’s sheets. “Worth the risk?”

Sherlock nudges back and finds the press of John’s mouth, gentle and certain. “It’s worth every risk.”  


	5. Snowman

The bed warms, the heat from their bodies transferring into the sheets: it’s John’s warmth on Sherlock’s toes, on his thighs, on his arms, made tangible through cotton. Their feet tangle together; their fingertips trace lines, making pathways on each other’s skin, wondering at the answers to all their questions as they’re uncovered, and it’s like melting away a layer of coldness Sherlock hadn’t even realised was there, awakening something in Sherlock to find the human heart inside the snowman.

It changes, in that slow, careful way: bit by curious bit. Hands that reach and explore, finally allowed to discover; thighs that press together underneath the sheets, cautious and trembling. The heat of the sheets settles into Sherlock’s spine, electric and insistent, sparking like a constellation coming to life deep inside him. 

Then John’s palm slides over Sherlock’s side, over the soft place above his hip where the hem of his t-shirt has ridden up, rough over his bare skin, and the spark alights into flame.

Sherlock _writhes_  against John’s touch, twisting his body hard into John’s palm as an automatic response, a soft noise of surprise slipping out of his throat and into John’s mouth, and John _surges_  back against him, licking the noise away as if he can taste it, pushing Sherlock back into the pillows. Their bodies collide as John shifts forward and his body is soft and hard and warm and pressing and close and not close enough and Sherlock breaks away in something like a gasp.

John pauses, heavy and still, hovering half over Sherlock’s body, half beside him, with his weight balanced on one elbow. His hand leaves Sherlock’s side to come curl against his neck. His breath clicks in his voice, but all he says is, “Sherlock.”

“I know,” Sherlock whispers back, lifting up to kiss John again, deep and a little unsteady. “I think–-yes. If you-–yes.”

John doesn’t pull away and the flame in Sherlock’s belly grows. His hips shift, trying to entice John toward them. “It’s not too much?”

“Not enough, more like.” There’s a laugh, somewhere, caught in Sherlock’s impatience and the heave of his chest. John huffs it back against the underside of Sherlock’s jaw. 

“Impatient,” he says, nosing at the collar of Sherlock’s shirt. “Tell me what you’re thinking. What you want.” 

Sherlock’s head tilts back as his neck arches into John’s touch; the hot, wet damp of John’s mouth is maddening on his skin. _What you want._  He has no idea what he wants. He wants everything. _Everything,_ and anything, whatever and wherever and whyever, he has no idea, and he never expected to have anything, he never expected to have John back in Baker Street much less in his bed, he never expected to know what it was like to feel John’s hands in his, on his cheek, on his chest, his waist, his hip, his-– _closer, closer._

He wants to know every possible thing his body can feel in combination with John’s. He wants to breathe in tandem and move in tandem and build in tandem–-“John, John, _John_ ,”–-to know what it is to have John in his life and in his bed and in his body, to be as close as anyone could possibly be to another, to devote as much of himself as one can devote to another. 

John touches him, and every touch is a lesson in things Sherlock hadn’t known before now: words like embrace, or caress, words like tender and beauty and need. That his body is a whole, a great entirety, that it is not some strange amalgamation of wrists and thighs and stomach and chest and skull but a great togetherness that only John has discovered. That some fires buoy, rather than burn; that not all needs are endless, unheard, unmet. John _touches_  him. 

Sherlock, with trembling fingers, touches back.

Their vests slide away like water passing over them, and their pyjamas, their pants follow, piece by piece-–he has no idea even which of them is doing it–-and their bodies meet. John is smooth, in some places, and hard in others, thin around the ribs and strong along his sternum, parts of him impossibly delicate and vulnerable, parts of him as solid as a cornerstone, as the foundations of Sherlock’s life. There is so much life in him, beating in his chest, and Sherlock touches and feels and _knows_ , knows, knows, that his own name is there, in the rhythm, in the tempo of John’s heart. 

“I love you,” John tells him, looking down over him, hands on either side of Sherlock’s head, hips shifting with undeniable, inevitable certainty. Sherlock can hardly breathe for want of him. His mouth is still gentle, terribly gentle. “God, but I do.”

“ _John_ ,” and the fire in Sherlock’s belly begins to crumble, shattering embers along his ribs, along his spine, through his back and thighs and groin, and John reaches and grasps and _pulls_  and Sherlock snaps, hard, his feet scrambling for purchase as his hips push up toward John’s body, he snaps, his breath and his voice stuck somewhere in the back of his throat, he snaps, he _snaps_ , and his vision is full of spinning fireworks and swirling snowflakes and a guiding light, he snaps, and John gasps and grunts and snaps back, pressing into him, pressing against him, their hands suddenly wet and hot between them, and Sherlock has never known before all the things that could be said with touch: joy and connectedness and fate and affection and love, _so much love_.

Everything is slower, after–-heavier. John spreads kisses over Sherlock’s collarbones, down his sternum. Sherlock fumbles in the sheets for one of their vests and wipes away the mess; it’s surprisingly ineffective. Everything will be sticky until someone goes to get a flannel. Sherlock doesn’t care; it will keep until morning. He wants to sink down into the heaviness and let it pull them both under. 

John apparently agrees, because he slides to the side and pulls Sherlock to his chest, pulling the covers up around them again. There’s something effervescent about him, Sherlock thinks, something bubbly with happiness, all loose joints and affectionate fingers, arranging the blankets around Sherlock’s chin. 

“Mmm,” Sherlock hums, in satisfaction and request: _hush now. Stop fussing. Come and sleep with me._

“Here,” John assures. “M’here.” He kisses the tip of Sherlock’s nose and settles down with him. “I’ll be here in the morning. Sleep.”

Sherlock breathes in the smell of John in his sheets, on his skin, and sleeps. 


	6. Home for the Holidays

The first thing he’s aware of is sunlight.

It’s warm and rose-gold against his eyelids, drawing him forward out of some delicious dream. The ends of it trail through his waking mind like a comet, scattering half-remembered images across his thoughts: _wet hot fire wishing dreaming hoping mouths and hands and hips and shoulders and lips parted in a gasp in a laugh in a smile in a promise someone warm heavy close near hand on his hip isn’t his hand tangled in his isn’t his back to chest and feet to feet–-_ John.

John.

He’s still here. Sherlock can feel him in the itch on his tummy and the hand on his hip and the barely-there brush of breath on the nape of his neck. He’s still here, holding Sherlock close, and Sherlock knows it’s him without looking because there’s a callus in just that particular spot on his thumb and because he can smell the very certain way John smells in the mornings, sleepy and just a little bit sour, and Sherlock smiles into the pillowcase and pushes himself back into the curve of John’s body and hopes the sheets will smell like that, too. 

There’s a slow waking happening behind him-–the breath on his neck stutters and starts again, the thumb on his stomach strokes once, pauses, strokes again, like he’s trying to place the sensation, like he’s trying to make sure he’s got the right body in his arms before he opens his eyes. Sherlock hums a deep reassurance; he doesn’t worry that he isn’t the right one. He knows he is. The way John looked at him, the way John touched him, the way John kissed him–-Sherlock knows. 

The breath on the nape of his neck stops again and then there’s a slow, soft press of something warm and damp--John’s mouth. A kiss. And another one, up the line of his bare shoulder. The nuzzle of a nose into the base of his curls. 

“Morning,” John says. “I know you’re awake.”

Sherlock grins and lifts his face toward the sunshine streaming in through the window, stretching along John’s body. “How can you tell?” 

He can feel John’s answering smile against his shoulder. “You think with your whole body. And you keep pushing your bum back against me.” 

“Hmm.” Sherlock pushes his bum back one more time and then shifts, pulling away to roll over and face him. John’s face is sleepy, loose and open and grinning like he’s been caught out of some hazy, fantastical dream, and Sherlock settles close, sharing the corner of John’s pillow, holding John’s hands in his. The honeyed light of morning shines on him, shines like a light of truth, and Sherlock feels like the weight of the world has been lifted from his chest. 

“Hello,” John says.

“Hello,” Sherlock returns, and John’s crooked smile grows a little wider before he leans in to give Sherlock a carefully chaste kiss. Sherlock wonders if this will be a normal sort of morning, from now on: waking up pressed together, soft hellos and slow kisses, a gentler start to things. He thinks he wouldn’t mind if it were. 

John watches him, the haze clearing from his eyes as the waking takes root and his thoughts begin to move faster. Showers, Sherlock thinks, will be first, and then breakfasts. Retrieving the rest of John’s belongings from the house in the suburb. Chinese takeaway in the evening, sharing everything and fighting over the last dumpling. Or a case, maybe: Lestrade could call at any moment and send them careening into the next adventure, murders and mayhem, foot chases over the rooftops of London or maybe deep underground, something to solve and someone to bring to justice, something that will be over at the end of the night so they can come home. 

So they can come home together.

Sherlock lingers in the next kiss, in the press of John against him, intimate and whole and here, willing and ready with hands clasped together, moving, finally, out of the reach of the storm and into the light. Out of whatever dark history may be behind them and into hope, and brightness, and renewal, into the spring of their lives out of winter.

He sighs in sheer happiness and snuggles back down into the pillows where he can watch the light of the morning on John’s face. There’s so much to say, so much to explain and admit and promise and hope and share, but all Sherlock can focus on is, “I’m glad you’re home.”

John kisses two of Sherlock’s fingertips as he settles back beside him. “Is it all right if I stay?” 

“Stay forever,” Sherlock says, and John does. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr!](http://www.watsonshoneybee.tumblr.com)


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